


By the Ocean

by mythomagicallydelicious



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Glass Shard Beach, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 00:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13535358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythomagicallydelicious/pseuds/mythomagicallydelicious
Summary: Filbrick Pines isn't completely untouched by the passage of time and the sentimentality of old age.(Very removed from it, but not untouched)





	By the Ocean

Filbrick stubbornly clung onto life for all these years. He’s still kicking when Ford comes out of the portal. He hasn’t worked at the pawn shop in ages. But he does have the apartment upstairs still. He rents out the space below.

He’s a fixture of that street in Glass Shard Beach. The stores and families on either side went out of business in the late 80s. Other families moved out to suburban New Jersey, away from the ocean. But Filbrick never left.

His routine has only varied slightly, because even he must bow to time and how it changes things. He wakes up at 5:30 every morning, gets dressed and ready for the day. Sunglasses in place, fedora atop his head. The same scratchy suit he’s worn for most of his adult life. He eats breakfast of burnt toast (he never could work the dam thing right. His wife had a way in the kitchen, not him). He picks the newspaper up off the stoop and reads every single article, huffing and scoffing at how flowery and unrealistic the news seems.

He makes himself a simple lunch. He yells at the golf match on TV or the birds outside his window or the kids throwing balls around in the street below, damaging the old brick walls.

In the evenings he takes a short walk down to the beach, right to the edge of the sand, and stares out at the ocean. The waves are dark and choppy as the sun sets behind him. He stares until he’s cold and then he walks home, in later years with a cane, back to his colder apartment.

He’s walked to the ocean every evening since his wife passed. He still hasn’t understood what is so dam enticing about the ocean. What adventure could possibly be left? Everything’s already been seen before. But his dear’s last requests included getting to know something about their sons. He cursed himself as being weak, later. For agreeing. For letting a tear slip down his face as he promised his wife he’d do as she asked, just this once.

That he let sentiment get the best of him and now look what he’s doing. Being an old man who’ll catch his death in the cold trying to please his long-gone wife. But he hasn’t spoken to either son in too long to call them, as Cassandra surely meant for him to do. But a man’s word is his everything. So he walked to the ocean every night and tried to understand what connection the boys had with it.

For years, all he’d been able to see was some bitter water and broken glass and dirty sand. He was never one for those artistic symbols or whatever hippy-dippy junk English teachers spouted on about. So any deeper meaning or metaphors to draw on about his life or relationships was lost on Filbrick.

But one day, as he was walking to the beach, stopping right at the edge of the sand, he saw something strange.

Occasionally he’d run into others at the beach. Other neighborhood fixtures like him or families coming down for the day, playing in the sand, against the waves, picking up shells and making noise. He ignored them, kids usually. And they ignored him in return.

But this evening as he went down to the beach’s edge he saw two older gentleman jumping around in the sand. Not older than Filbrick, mind, but they had to be in their fifties or pushing sixties. Yet here were two full grown men, acting like absolute children. Kicking sand at each other, cupping ocean water into hands and bringing it back to make a sandcastle. Throwing shells and exclaiming loudly over their beauty or ugliness. Dragging seaweed into strange designs. Cursing when they stepped on some of the ground up glass still visible in the sand.

Behaving like absolute children, Filbrick was astonished. He didn’t watch the ocean that night, just those two. Something seemed strangely familiar about them, though he honestly didn’t pay enough attention to the neighborhood to recognize them by sight or voice.

He was backlit by the sun, and maybe that was why he could see their expressions so clearly. For Filbrick sneezed, nose getting irritated at the salty breeze, and both men turned automatically at the sound to bless him.

The men wore similar looks of being startled. Filbrick assumed they had to be brothers. He felt a chill go down his spine as he realized they were almost certainly twins. The men, now aware they were being watched, moved closer together and started walking towards Filbrick. He resolutely ignored them and stared over their head to the ocean. He wouldn’t be intimidated from his purpose by two strangers on _his_ beach.

He heard their low voices as they approached but still didn’t look at them. They stopped just before him and stared.

“Filbrick Pines?” Asked the man on the left. That startled Filbrick out of his try at ignoring them, and looked at the two men before him.

It was almost like looking into a mirror, if a mirror showed yourself 20-some years in the past. The men had the same nose, jaw, and set look about them that Filbrick recognized. It was strange, but not uncommon enough to mean anything.

“Yes. Who are you?” He responded briskly.

The men shared a quick, sidelong glance and then turned back to him. The man on the right stood a little straighter, while the man on the left cleared his throat.

“Stanford Pines.”

“Stanley Pines.”

They spoke at the same time and Filbrick felt his mouth run dry. He felt his legs weaken but his voice was strong, if a bit quieter than normal, when he answered.

“Impossible. Stanley’s gone. And I haven’t spoken to Stanford in years. We’re not on terms. Who are you?”

The men exchanged another glance with expressions changing too fast for Filbrick to follow.

“Pa,” the man on the left started gently, only to be interrupted as the man on the right grabbed his friend’s arm and held it in front of Filbrick’s face.

“Looky here, old man. This is your second son, and I’m your third, back from the dead, live in living color.” He dropped the man’s arm and crossed his own over his chest.

“Stan,” Lefty hissed, looking cross before turning back to Filbrick cautiously. “But yes, that is accurate.

Filbrick looked back and forth between the two men, jaw going slack. He shook his head as if to clear it, but the men before him didn’t disappear. His brain felt like it was short-circuiting. He didn’t understand, he didn’t know what was happening. Through his overloaded haze, one question slipped out, almost without his permission.

“ _Why_ ,” he asked, trembling a bit harder now. He gripped the handle of his cane tighter and tried to focus.

The men tilted their heads at the exact same time, at the exact same questioning angle.

“‘Why’ what, exactly? There are many things you could be referring to,” Stanford answered, ever the smart-alec as he reached up to adjust his glasses.

Stanley stared at him impassively, expression hardening slightly the longer Filbrick spent floundering for words.

“Come on. What happened to ‘ _F_ _rankly is the only way I speak’_? Huh? You’re bein’ worse than a tourist.”

“Boys,” Filbrick started, which earned a snort and an eye-roll from Stan but he pushed on, only one thought in mind. “Why did you like the ocean so much?”

That was obviously what neither had been expecting. It was their turns to drop their jaws, to watch eyes widen and then narrow. To see them give each other those twin looks Filbrick remembered from years and years ago.

“You finally see us after thirty years,”

“And more,” added Stanley.

“And all you want to know is why we came out to the beach as kids?!”

Ford’s tone was filled with incredulity, Stan’s with anger. Filbrick shook his head but when he went to open his mouth, all he could say was, “Cass told me to ask.”

Filbrick looked down and away, embarrassed he’d let slip something so personal. He felt shaken to his core, that his sons were here in front of him, _alive_ even, and he had no idea why or where they came from or how long they’d been here.

He didn’t see Stan’s expression soften at the mention of their mother. Ford put a hand on Stan’s shoulder and Stan nodded his thanks.

“Initially I enjoyed it because it got us away from you,” Ford started, feeling Stan tense up at the casual tone he took to insult their father to his face. Ford continued on, acting oblivious to Stan’s distress, not even being able to see Filbrick’s eyes widening behind his sunglasses. “But later it became an escape from many unbearable aspects of life. Bullies especially. But most of all I liked coming to the ocean because Stan did. We found so much to do and see here, every day was an adventure, even if we kicked the same rocks every day for a year, it always felt new and fun every day. It’s where we founded our life-long dream of sailing away from this dumb place, and all the terrible things about it. Like you, or schools that hated us, or children that called us freaks and losers or worthless.”

Filbrick felt each word hit him like a stone. He felt like he wanted to get angry, but everything felt so far away. Emotions did not normally come easily to him, but now he felt overwhelmed with everything Ford said. So much so that he was frozen, rooted to where he stood, staring at his sons.

Stan looked up and responded as well. “I liked the beach because I felt free down here. The happiest memories I got left of this place was that little strip of sand. Pulling a derelict boat out of a cave and promising my best friend that one day life wouldn’t kick us in the teeth anymore.”

Filbrick looked down, and slowly pulled off his sunglasses. He folded them and put them in his suit pocket. He took a hesitant step forward and, for the first time in all the years he’d been coming to the beach, he actually stepped foot on the sand. Stan and Ford watched him, muscles tensed as if ready for a fight.

Filbrick didn’t intend on giving them one. But he smiled a small bit and looked between his sons. “I like it because it’s nice, down here. It’s cold and it’s crunchy but with the sun behind me, it’s not half bad.”

Stan and Ford looked at him like he was crazy. Hell, maybe he was. But he had finally been able to fulfill his promise to Cass. He shivered as the night air swept over him, and he started to turn back to walk home. Before he did he paused, and looked at his sons.

“Good luck, out there. On the ocean. You don’t deserve to be kicked in the teeth. You probably never did.” And he turned away.

He walked slowly back to his apartment. He made a small dinner and ate it. He got ready for bed and was asleep by 10 o'clock.

The next morning he woke up at 5:30 in the morning. He went about his routine in silence. And when evening came, he walked outside and to the beach, right to the edge of it. He toed off his shoes and socks, and walked onto the beach proper, feeling the sand squish between his toes and watching out for any shells or shards of glass. He walked right up to the water and let it wash over his feet, getting the bottom of his slacks wet.

He didn’t care. He let four tears fall, one for each son, and one for Cassandra. In the distance he saw a boat pushing out to sea. He had no proof, for many boats took this route, but something in him told him that he knew who was sailing away.

“I finally get it, Cass.”

Filbrick clung to life for another three years before passing alone in his house over the newspaper he read every day. After that night he’d only returned to the beach on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

Filbrick Pines was a stubborn man. Too set in his ways of silence to try and find his sons again before he passed. But he finally felt like he understood something about them. And despite how hippy-dippy it felt, he thought he learned something about himself, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. A fic that finally made me just pick a name for Ma Pines. It didn't seem right that Filbrick wouldn't just call his wife by her first name, but I usually hate picking an hc name for her. Either way, hope it worked for you guys.
> 
> The fic I absolutely did not mean to write, but here we are, haha. Thanks for reading!


End file.
